JONES: Leduc adding another feather to its curling cap with Canadian Club championships

Laura Crocker and Kirk Muyres hold up their gold medals after defeating Team Kadriana Sahaidak and Colton Lott 8-7 in the gold-medal final of last year's Canadian Mixed Doubles Curling Championship at the Leduc Recreation Centre. The community is becoming quite the curling destination, with a pair of championship events now scheduled for this winter.Ed Kaiser / Postmedia file

The Oilers Entertainment Group, with the Ice District nearing completion, your agent has learned, has made initial inquiries with the intent of making Rogers Place available for it’s first Brier.

But that is in the most preliminary of stages and probably would be three or four years away.

In the meantime, Leduc is stepping forward to be a curling destination on it’s own.

Yet another event has been secured by the aggressive community, currently booming despite the Alberta economy, with the opening of the new Century Mile horse race track, an outlet mall and several other concerns, including a cannabis growing facility at the Edmonton International Airport.

Leduc was already scheduled to play host to the Home Hardware Canada Cup Nov. 27-Dec. 1 at Sobey’s Arena, but it was announced Monday they have decided to piggyback another event with it.

The Canadian Club Curling Championships will take place in the Leduc Curling Club in the same Leduc Recreation Centre complex Nov. 25-30.

The Canada Cup event will feature the top six teams in the nation in a round-robin format, plus playoffs with the winning men’s and women’s teams capturing the first spot in the Roar of the Rings Olympic Trials.

It’s expected the teams will be announced later this month, but you can expect the likes of Kevin Koe, Brad Gushue and Brendan Bottcher on the men’s side and Jennifer Jones, Rachel Homan and Chelsea Carey in the women’s event.

In 2018, Leduc stepped up and played host to the combined package of U-Sports, Canadian college, mixed and wheelchair championships. Leduc also held the inaugural Canadian mixed doubles in 2013, the 1994 Canadian mixed and the 1991 Canadian juniors.

The Canadian Curling Club championships were created to fill a void essentially created by those very elite, essentially professional teams.

Years ago, to make it to the Brier, you first had to qualify by winning your club competition then advance to zone play through to provincials.

This will be the 11th edition of the curling club event that will feature 14 men’s and 14 women’s teams representing the 10 provinces and three territories, as well as Northern Ontario.

Minus the elite players, it’s what the Brier used to be.

The CCCCs were invented for recreational club curlers who don’t have the time or resources to compete at a high performance level.

“It gives the club curlers a chance to compete on the national stage and we’ve seen what a thrill that can be,” said Maureen Miller, chair of Curling Canada’s board of governors.

It’s ironic, in a way, that they will now share a stage with the very curlers who took that stage away from some of them.

“Having the opportunity to showcase these curlers alongside the Canada Cup field will make this a unique event,” she added.

It will be the first time Alberta has played host to the event. Overall, Manitoba has won four women’s events followed by Ontario with three, Alberta with two and Prince Edward Island with the other. In men’s play, Alberta has won three titles, followed by British Columbia and Saskatchewan with two each and Newfoundland with one.

If the combination should continue into future hostings of the event, then this one will go down in history as Leduc No. 1.